A Chance Encounter

And yet another new poem sparked by and old, new friend and the upcoming school year.

A chance encounter
stumbled upon among half-
forgotten names in a virtual
yearbook sent me spiraling
back into musty halls clogged
with the muffled echoes of teenage angst.

Snapshots appear then
disappear into a dormant scrapbook
where images blur and bleed into each other,
the Kaleidoscope collage from a long barren field.

Memories are like sandcastles
on shifting sand--
tiny grains of truth and half-
truths watered down with the waves
of eroded emotions.


Swells of first love
and small triumphs crash
against pangs of rejection
amid tugs of uncertainty. It’s
a roller coaster of
insecurity cloaked in brash spirit--
a wobbly ride over untested landscape.


I fumble my way
among the fossils,
like a blind woman
picking the bones of a distant land,
detached, yet not…
immune to lingering echoes.




~~~8/12/10

Too Close to the Bones of Your Death

A special friend has been on my mind lately. He died of Cancer a few years ago. As I flipped the TV channels earlier today I glimpsed a golfer at the Masters. It reminded me how much he loved the game. In honor of my friend's memory I thought I'd share, again, a poem I wrote after learning of his death.

Too close to the bones of your death,
I think, to excavate the burial site.
How does one objectively pick apart
memories while dusting off raw emotions?

They say the cancerous beast fed quickly,
sucked dry any marrow of respite. Reality, it seems,
pulled the plug on a negotiable checkout time.
You, who ate life like candy, would not waste away
on a sugar-free half-life of hope.

I see you spinning in a kaleidoscope of moments,
captured grains at the bottom of an hourglass.
The dust will settle, in time, I know.
A slow-motion slide show is best viewed
when the bones are catalogued and safely under glass.

© 2003 Pam Patterson